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MaxPlanckResearch

The MaxPlanckResearch reports in a clear and comprehensible way about the scientific research carried out at the institutes of the Max Planck Society. The magazine is aimed at the interested public, schoolchildren, teachers and journalists. Four issues are published annually. The subscription is free of charge. More in formation, see: https://www.mpg.de/mpresearch

MaxPlanckResearch 4/2023

Icy Times

The last Ice Age has shaped human life in Europe for thousands of years. Driven from Central Europe by low temperatures during glacial periods, Homo sapiens repeatedly reconquered previously uninhabitable regions during interglacial periods. Johannes Krause and his team at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig are studying these migrations.

MaxPlanckResearch 4/2022 Post From

Kangiqsujuaq, Canada

Elspeth Ready from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig regularly travels to the Canadian Arctic for research. She tells of magnificent expanses, special culinary delights, and an icy dog sled ride.

MaxPlanckResearch 4/2020

We cultured humans

In many ways, our thoughts and actions are influenced by our social background, which is why people’s behavior varies so widely between different countries throughout the world. The psychologist Daniel Haun, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, has made cultural diversity a focal topic of his research. His theory is that we cannot ultimately determine what it is that makes us human until we are aware of what we have in common and what our differences are.

MaxPlanckResearch 2/2020

Viruses from the Wilderness

Roman Wittig, who heads up the Taï Chimpanzee Project at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, knows what happens when a virus changes its host, and has experienced it several times in the Taï National Park in the République de Côte d’Ivoire, the last time having been four years ago, when a coronavirus that is harmless to humans jumped from humans to chimpanzees. In collaboration with Fabian Leendertz of the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin, he is looking into pathogens that cause disease in chimpanzees and which of them could also pose a threat to humans.